


What Makes Scars

by bethagain



Series: On From Here [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Din may possibly be an unreliable narrator when it comes to his own mental state right now, Gen, Post-Chapter 16, Scars, and the stories behind them, mental scars, physical scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29031447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain
Summary: Scars happen differently as we get older.His body’s not as resilient as it used to be.A follow-on fromSomewhere.
Series: On From Here [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2129814
Comments: 5
Kudos: 40





	What Makes Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Brought over from tumblr. 
> 
> 100% inspired by Fanfoolishness’s [drawing](https://fanfoolishness.tumblr.com/post/641208064406650880) of Din training with the Darksaber, and the scars she gave him. 
> 
> If nudity is a squick for you, maybe skip this one. But I promise it’s rated G. (Well, I guess PG, but that's mainly for memories of canon-typical violence.) Plus, c’mon people, we are looking _respectfully._

Scars happen differently as we get older. 

The trauma we experience when we’re young has a way of fading, Din thinks, as he closes his eyes, letting hot water rush over his head. 

He still thinks about his family. Still has those unbidden flashbacks, even. But it doesn’t _hurt_ the way it used to. 

He’s at an inn on the outskirts of a small city on a sparsely populated planet, with a bright blue sky, low hills, a dilapidated spaceport, and buildings built of actual wood with roofs and floors of hand-made tile. He’s left his clothes and armor laid out on the bed, a little far away for comfort, but he’s locked the door to his room and paid the innkeeper extra not to mention the presence of a Mandalorian. There’s at least some hope the man will keep his word. 

This inn has seen better days. The shower water smells fresh, but the pipes that bring it are rusted. The wood beams at one corner of the ceiling are swollen and cracked from an old leak. 

He turns a knob until the temperature is near-scalding, breathes in steam. The pain of giving up the child is still sharp like the water hitting his skin. He reminds himself, the child is where he needs to be. With people who will love him like he deserves to be loved. Din will walk his way through this, keep himself moving until it’s passed into the background. Along with everything else he’s lost. 

He shuts off the water a few minutes later, mindful of the possibility that conservation is an issue here. The land where he set down the scout ship looked green, but these days you never know who controls the resources. And he’s not exactly rolling in credits to pay extra on his bill. All he’s got is what Fett loaned him. He’s going to have to find work if he wants to eat for more than a couple of days. 

There are drying jets built into the wall, but when Din flips the switch to start them there’s nothing but a faint puff of air. He stands there dripping while he looks around the shower cubby for a cloth, a towel, anything, but no luck. Instead, he uses his hands to swipe water from his hair and body, then makes his way back to where his clothes are waiting.

He picks up his shirt and uses it to dry off a bit better. It’s clean, more or less, thanks to a little jury-rigging of the sonic shower on the scout ship. 

He’s still thinking about scars. He's gotten better at managing the mental ones as he's gotten older, but the body goes the other way. Cuts that wouldn’t have left a mark twenty years ago take longer to heal. Like as not they’ll leave a silvery trace, a ghost to remind him of moments he let his guard down. Or wasn’t good enough. Or, he thinks, as he rubs his arms dry, kind of stupid.

The shiny spot on his right forearm, paler than the skin around it: That’s from talking over his shoulder to the child, reciting the alphabet in Basic while lifting their dinner from the warmer. He’d never gotten around to insulating the thing properly, which is why he burned the hell out of his arm, dropped the dish, and spent the next twenty minutes cleaning food off the walls and floor while apologizing for the words he'd said and the decibels at which he’d said them. They had a cold supper that night, with the child cuddled in his lap until the little body stopped cringing every time Din spoke.

There's a very faint, straight line below his left shoulder, barely visible, tracing the edge of an old pauldron he no longer wears or even owns. It shows more clearly only with pressure, when he slides the cloth along it. That was Xi'an's knife, and he was young, and he still doesn't understand her white-hot anger. He'd avoided her for a few days, and they'd never spoken of it, and by the time they had their next job together, a week or two later, his skin was already almost healed.

But this one, just below it, earned in a fight when the child was nothing but a means to an end, nothing but a camtono of beskar and a point toward his reputation in the Guild. His skin doesn't have the resilience it used to. Almost a year on and it's still a dip across his bicep, still a wide and jagged patch of white. It feels fragile if he presses on it, like there's missing flesh beneath.

A rivulet slides down his neck so he finds a dry spot on the shirt to rub at his hair, then catch the last of the drips on his back and chest. The uneven, raised patch just below his collarbone, that's also new. If abrasions had always scarred, he'd have an outline of every piece of armor on his body. But in the last few years, he's begun to collect these souvenirs. Here, where the mudhorn drove his breastplate into his skin, even through the layers of clothing between. Here near the bottom of his ribs, when he crashed through the ceiling on that prison ship and landed badly. 

And here, where Moff Gideon's Darktrooper held him by the shoulder, metal fingers pressing so hard against beskar that its edge left a cut beneath it. Right now it's still a red line, the area around it rubbed raw, just beginning to scab over. He expects he'll be keeping that one, too.

He's been standing there long enough now that the rest of his body is nearly dry. He pulls on underclothes, tugs black leggings over the bruises on his knees and thighs. He steps into his flightsuit, leaving the top hanging down around his waist as he carries the damp shirt over to the window. This room is three floors up. It looks out over empty land toward those low, green hills. He raises the sash, lays the shirt out on the scratched and pitted windowsill, and lets the cool air dry the last of the water on his skin.

His body may not heal like it used to, but he's learned, by now, how to breathe through other kinds of pain. 

Din's hand strays to his neck, to touch the beskar pendant that he's worn since he was a child, and finds the empty space where it used to be. 

He picks the shirt back up, pulls it over his head and ignores that it feels clammy and cold. He shrugs the flightsuit up over his shoulders as he heads back to the bed where the pieces of armor wait. A few minutes later each piece is in place on his body and he's settling the helmet on his head, settling his blaster at his hip.

It’s time to go see if there's work for him here.


End file.
